I fired someone for the first time today. This person was the first I hired and was with me for 18 months. It was a hard decision and probably months overdue. She didn’t take it well and ended up threatening me. The close friendship we had feels fake. I helped her in her times of need so many times and feel taken advantage of.
I couldn’t sleep last night and feel sick. I’ve done nothing wrong. I understand looking back at former bosses why they kept their distance. It’s just my nature to want to get close to employees because it’s a small business and we are together so many hours a week. Any words of advise from my fellow small business owners?
You are not alone, I’ve always found it difficult to fire someone, fortunately is has been a rare occurrence. However, it has always been a huge relief once it was done. All of the tension is gone and the whole company can feel it around the office, just a better atmosphere. This presupposes that it was a legitimate firing of course.
My experience has actually been the other employees are even happier than I am the person is gone, no hard working honest employee likes it when a co-worker is shirking. If action wasn’t taken, you can be sure someone else would soon be saying to themselves, why am I busting my butt?
As others have mentioned, no firing should be unexpected if management has been doing their job…still doesn’t mean the person will take it reasonably…reasonable people don’t typically get fired from good companies. With time and distance you will gain ever better perspective on the whole situation/relationship and this experience will help you going forward.